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By Wandering Eyes · Posted
It was a big weekend for trainer Brendan Walsh, whose Bella Ballerina (Street Sense) was a game winner of the GII Rachel Alexandra Stakes. A half-sister to Pretty Mischievous (Into Mischief), the 2023 GI Kentucky Oaks winner, who was also trained by Walsh, the trainer is hoping to pull off what would be a unique daily double–winning the Oaks twice within four years with half-siblings. To discuss the Rachel Alexandra win, his take on Bella Ballerina and what he has planned on the way to the Oaks, Walsh joined this week's TDN Writers' Room Podcast presented by Keeneland. He was the Gainesway Guest of the Week. It was not an easy victory for Bella Ballerina, who was passed in the stretch by Luv Your Neighbor (Constitution), but battled back in deep stretch to win by a half-length under Tyler Gaffalione. “I thought it was a very game performance,” Walsh said. “When she was coming down the stretch, it looked like she was beaten. I thought to myself, 'You know, she's run well. We've got what we needed to get out of it. She'll improve a ton the next time she starts back up again.' I thought, 'Well, OK, we'll take that.' But yes, it was just a game performance on her part. It's the first time she's ever been headed.” The similarities between Pretty Mischievous and Bella Ballerina go beyond the fact that they are half-sisters, as both won the Rachel Alexandra. Bella Ballerina will start next in the March 21 GII Fair Grounds Oaks. Pretty Mischievous was second in that race before going on to win the Kentucky Oaks. “(Bella Ballerina) was a little trickier when she was a baby,” Walsh said. “She had her own ideas about certain things. But all credit goes to the team. They got her straightened out. We worked on her last year. She was just a little bit of a play girl at the time. She'd try and get up to a few little tricks, but nothing horrible.” Walsh liked what he saw Saturday. “Tyler came in and he worked her a bunch of times last year and more this year,” he said. “He got to know her. She behaved very well on Saturday. She behaved very well before the race. She behaved very well in the race, and I think that had a lot to do with Tyler. There are a lot of similarities between the two horses. (Bella Ballerina) is getting stronger and, physically, she looks more like Pretty Mischievous did at this point. The good ones, they all have that class, and she seems to have an abundance of it. She's got a very good mind, and I think that's going to be super important going forward.” Walsh has come a long way from the young man who began his career with the powerful Godolphin team galloping horses. “It's unbelievable,” he said. “It's like the stuff you dream of. I spent years in Dubai and around all those good horses that they had at Al Quoz. Did I ever think I was going to actually be in a position where I would be training for them? Absolutely not. It is a dream come true. It's unbelievable to have access to that standard of a horse every year and to get to work with these horses and these people. They're just the most fantastic people to work with. You wake up in the morning and you pinch yourself. Believe me, I'm under no illusions. It's a privileged position and it's great to be there.” Walsh also spoke of his mentor in the U.S., trainer Eddie Kenneally. Walsh served as his assistant before going out on his own in 2012. “Learning to train in the U.S., it was a huge adjustment,” he said. “It's a completely different ball game. You're dealing with a different type of horse. Dubai was very turf-orientated. That was one thing with Eddie. I really got to learn how to get down to the nitty gritty of it with him. Even when riding horses, dirt horses are different than grass horses. Turf horses have this turn of foot, and when you work them you see that they have a serious turn of foot. Dirt horses tend to be more constant. They cruise along, cruise along, cruise along. It's just completely different, and that's just to name a couple of things. There are thousands of other different angles when you start training over here. Eddie taught me so much. He's a fantastic trainer.” The “Fastest Horse of the Week” was Grande (Curlin), who earned a 105 Beyer figure when winning a Feb. 14 allowance race at Gulfstream. It was his first start since he finished second in the GII Wood Memorial Stakes. The Fastest Horse of the Week segment is sponsored by WinStar, which stands the fast sire Nashville. Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the PHBA, 1/ST TV, and West Point Thoroughbreds, Randy Moss, Bill Finley, and Zoe Cadman discussed the solid performance from Forever Young (Jpn) (Reel Steel {Jpn}) in the $20 million Saudi Cup and the terrific rail-skimming ride he got from jockey Ryusei Sakai. The team also discussed the wins in Saudi Arabia by the American-based sprinters Imagination (Into Mischief) and Reef Runner (The Big Beast). Recapping the rest of the weekend's action, the win by Paladin (Gun Runner) in the Risen Star Stakes was given high marks by the panel. Click here to listen to the podcast or click here to watch. The post Brendan Walsh Joins The TDN Writers’ Room Podcast Presented By Keeneland appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Friday, Meydan, UAE, post time: 18:50, UAE OAKS SPONSORED BY DEEPAL-G3, AED800,000, 3yo, f, 1900m Field: Labwah (Charlatan), Tjareed (Yaupon), Dozalla (Upstart), Yuno (Rock Your World), Pretty And Famous (Known Agenda), Auntie Fair (Uncle Chuck), Dialed To Dubai (Dialed In). Friday, Meydan, UAE, post time: 20:35, BALANCHINE SPONSORED BY AL TAYER MOTORS-G2, AED850,000, 4yo/up, SH 3yo, f/m, 1800mT Field: Dubai Beach (Ire) (Blue Point {Ire}), Dubai Treasure (Ire) (Exceed And Excel {Aus}), Fairy Glen (Fr) (Farhh {GB}), Capitana Bling (Ire) (Invincible Army {Ire}), Riyabovka (Fr) (Caullery), Blue Nazare (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}), Miss Of Change (Fr) (King Of Change {GB}). Friday, Meydan, UAE, post time: 18:50, NAD AL SHEBA TROPHY SPONSORED BY DEEPAL-G3, AED700,000, 4yo/up, 2810mT Field: Sunway (Fr) (Galiway {GB}), Al Nayyir (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}), By The Book (Ire) (Frankel {GB}), Crystal Black (Ire) (Teofilo {Ire}), Kihavah (GB) (Harbour Watch {Ire}), Aeronautic (Ire) (Gleneagles {Ire}), Nightwalker (GB) (Frankel {GB}), Surabad (GB) (Bated Breath {GB}). Friday, Meydan, UAE, post time: 21:10, DUBAI ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY SPONSORED BY AL TAYER MOTORS-Listed, AED800,000, 3yo, 1900m Field: Salloom (Authentic), Lino Padrino (Uncle Lino), Brotherly Love (GB) (Zoustar {Aus}), Raajehh (Complexity), Al Khawaneej (Honest Mischief), Omaha Front (Omaha Beach), Watch Collector (Medaglia d'Oro), Duke Of Immatin (Gun Runner), Knight Of Glory (Knicks Go), Senator Of State (Ire) (Ten Sovereigns {Ire}), Awesome Fleet (Ire) (US Navy Flag), Sary Shayan (Constitution), Fire d'Oro (Bold d'Oro). Click here for the complete fields. The post Black-Type Analysis: Salloom Aims For Kentucky Derby Pointer appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Can you see her still, in your mind's eye, that dark bay filly with a gait so ungainly as to almost belie her brilliance? Almost. But make no mistake, Attraction was brilliant, with a steeliness to match. The Irn Bru of racehorses: made in Scotland from girders. “People label horses as tough and talk about horses like Double Trigger being tough. Well, he wasn't particularly tough. I've encountered three horses in my career, I would say, that were exceptionally tough and they were all mares.” So says Mark Johnston, the man who knows Attraction better than most, and as the great mare turns 25 on February 19, it is an apposite moment to cast our minds back to the early years of this century, when she was in her pomp. “I had the two best horses of my career in the yard at the same time in 2004, that's her and Shamardal,” Johnston recalls. “And the thing they had in common was that they were both explosive out of the stalls, but a child could lead them up at the races. “She was completely laidback and quiet, never got on her toes, stood like a lamb to be saddled, cantered easily to the start. And the minute the stalls opened, boom, she was out and gone. So in that sense, she was really a joy to train. She didn't give us any difficulties at the race track whatsoever.” He continues, “I always say that she was the ultimate racehorse, because if you went to look at her in her box, she was either lying down or eating. They always say the good ones just eat, sleep and gallop. But I suppose it's possible that she was always lying down because the knees hurt. I don't know.” Ah yes, those famously offset knees. How many agents and trainers would have crossed her off their lists at the sales the moment she walked out of her box? As it was, the Duke of Roxburghe's yearling daughter of Efisio and the Pursuit Of Love mare Flirtation wasn't even granted a sales berth. “Guy Roxburghe, the late Duke, asked me to go and look at this filly in the autumn of her yearling year. He kept saying she was from a great family, but she was from a pretty cold family, and she's by Efisio, who I was a great fan of, but he was a cheap, run-of-the-mill stallion,” Johnston says of the first time he laid eyes on Attraction. “She was very, very offset in front. He tried to put her in the sales and neither Doncaster nor Tatts would take her. And so he asked if I would train her for half of her? And I said, 'No.' He asked if I could find somebody to lease her but generally, to this day, I've never advised people to lease horses. “As I understand it, he made the same offer to Tim Easterby, who also rejected it. And he then made the same offer to John Hills, who said that not only could he find somebody to lease her, he could find somebody to lease three fillies. So three fillies went to John Hills in the autumn of 2002. And by the spring, John had only found somebody to lease one of them, so Guy said he could train one of the other two for him but one was to come to Mark Johnston, and John sent us Attraction.” Still unnamed, she arrived in Middleham in February 2003 and was already cantering. She didn't hang about. “Bobby Elliott galloped her and came back and said to me, 'This isn't half bad, you'd better get it named'. I phoned the Duke and said, 'I think this is ready to run and it goes very well',” Johnston recalls. “Guy Roxburghe was a wee bit of a punter at times and I remember him phoning me when she was going to run and saying, 'Will this win? Because Roger Charlton's got one in the race that he thinks is very useful.'” Attraction, though, was a little bit more useful, and anyone who had tuned in for the Harby Novice Median Auction Stakes at Nottingham on April 29, 2003 would have had the privilege of the first public sighting of a superstar in the making. She beat Charlton's Avid Spell by five lengths and bounced out less than three weeks later to win again, at Thirsk. They were the only two occasions she was not in black-type company. Johnston picks up the story. “Following that Thirsk run, she was already entered for the Hilary Needler, and the late Sheikh Rashid, Sheikh Mohammed's eldest son, tried to buy her. The Duke was going to sell her but they wanted to vet her before the race and he said, 'No, she's entered and we're going to run in this race. You can buy her as she stands or you don't buy her'. So she ran and she won.” Easy victories in the Queen Mary and the Cherry Hinton followed but as she was being prepared for her first Group 1 mission in the Cheveley Park, Attraction brought about her own temporary downfall by kicking the manger in her stable and fracturing her pedal bone. “Interestingly, somebody just found me the x-rays of Attraction yesterday,” Johnston notes. “We've been clearing out years of x-rays and I said, 'Don't throw out Attraction's.' There's loads of her pedal bone and, obviously, of her knees. And then there's loads of her hind leg, which was at the end of her career when she went lame behind and we retired her. But after she fractured her pedal bone, we had a meeting of myself, the Duke of Roxburghe, [vets] Nick Wingfield Digby and David Ellis, and John Warren in Newmarket, and the consensus was that the pedal bone wasn't an issue, that it would definitely heal. The question was, would we be able to bring her back from a long layoff and, having been let down, get her fit again? “Obviously, we had won the 2,000 Guineas first time up with Mister Baileys but in Attraction's case it was about the fact that at that stage, we didn't know how many races there were in her. So we decided to go for the jackpot first time out because we were never certain how long she would last.” He continues, “We had a yard man, called Richard Heslop, he used to go and fetch her first thing when he arrived at work in the morning and she would spend first lot on the walker because she had to be loosened up before she could be ridden out. And that was throughout her career – she'd come out shuffling and scraping along. “And I think it's an interesting thing now with all this interference from the BHA veterinary department and so on. The attitude with Attraction was that she was no more likely than any other horse to have a life-threatening fracture in a race. But we all imagined that one day she would hobble off the track very lame and that would be the end of that, because she had so many changes in her knees.” The Duke of Roxburghe (trilby) walks in with Attraction and Kevin Darley after her win in the 1,000 Guineas | Racingfotos The plan worked, and then some. Attraction, partnered by Kevin Darley, became the first filly to win the 1,000 Guineas, Irish 1,000 Guineas and Coronation Stakes, those wonky knees propelling her swiftly down many a course and into many hearts. Her first defeat came at the hands of another top-class mare, the year-older Soviet Song (Marju) in the Falmouth Stakes at Newmarket, and the pair finished in the same top two spots later that year in the Matron Stakes. Attraction's one lacklustre run came in soft ground in the Prix Jacques Le Marois and she was never asked to run in those conditions again. “She really struggled with soft ground, presumably because of the knees and the very scratchy action. She couldn't lift her feet out of it,” says Johnston, who opted not to declare her for the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes when he learned that the clerk of the course had been watering. One final hurrah in her three-year-old season came on the same straight mile over which she had first become a Classic heroine. Her victory in the Sun Chariot Stakes ensured that Attraction stood alone in Europe in 2004 as the winner of four Group 1 races. Mark Johnston has long been renowned at the sales for valuing pedigree and mares' ratings over conformation. Was it perhaps his success with Attraction that emboldened this approach? “No,” he says emphatically. “She won a Cartier Award and the Duke made a speech and he said it was poetic justice that she'd gone to the only trainer that might have bought her if she'd gone through a sale. And that was very flattering but it wasn't really true. I wouldn't have bought her, but some of that would have been because the pedigree wasn't good enough to outweigh the conformation. But what it did teach me – something I always knew and something that sort of led to me having that reputation – I always say conformation doesn't stop at the elbow. Attraction was a really magnificent specimen apart from her front legs. She was a very powerful, strong horse.” Of course conformation is carefully considered by buyers when it comes to broodmares, too. Attraction had reignited her pedigree but would her front legs be replicated in her offspring? According to Johnston, who has inspected them all and has trained five of them, including the two top-rated, Elarqam (Frankel) and Maydanny (Dubawi), this was largely not an issue. “Huntlaw (Oasis Dream) was gelded before he came to us and that was because of front limb conformation. Not anything as bad as his mother's, but offset knees the same. But he was a very good horse. The Duke sold him in the end. He left us sound with his top rating, 95. I think he'd have gone on to be a black-type performer as well.” Attraction has four black-type performers and nine winners from her 15 foals of racing age, with two-year-old and yearling colts by Too Darn Hot to come. Elarqam, a treble group winner, including the G2 York Stakes, tops the list and he is at stud in Turkey having started his stallion career in France. Her Group 3-winning sprinter Fountain Of Youth (Oasis Dream) stood at Bearstone Stud until 2020. Attraction at Fittocks Stud with Elarqam as a foal | Emma Berry Of her four daughters, the Grade 3-placed Cushion (Galileo), who raced for the Duke of Roxburghe and Sue Magnier and died two years ago, produced Hafit (Dubawi), who was placed in the G2 Queen's Vase. Another, Motion (Invincible Spirit), is the dam of last year's Listed Star Stakes winner Hope Queen (Night Of Thunder), a potential Classic prospect this season for Karl Burke and Jaber Abdullah. “Attraction is not really an influence on the breed, but not far off it,” Johnston says. “She produced a couple of stallions. They haven't gone on to do anything great, but she is a bit of an out-cross. “Every year we see the first-season sires and everybody gets really excited if they have one Group 1 winner, and then a Group 1-winning mare, if she doesn't have a Group 1 winner in the first four foals, they start writing her off. But it's actually amazing how consistently these top race mares do perform in the paddocks.” Johnston is plainly not a sentimental man and he trained more than 5,000 winners during his record-breaking career. That said, it is easy to detect in the way he speaks of Attraction that she holds a special place in his heart. “People say to me, 'Who's the best horse you've ever trained?' I say, it was Shamardal. He's the best horse I trained, but I only trained him as a two-year-old and won one Group 1 with him. The best horse for us was Attraction. By a long way, the horse I am most proud of training is Attraction, because, and you can never say for sure, but I feel that probably nobody else would have done the same with her or achieved the same with her, because there's so many opportunities to retire a horse.” Retirement for Attraction came at the end of her four-year-old season, which started with a trip to Hong Kong for the G1 Champions Mile in May, during which she injured a suspensory ligament. Another period of recovery was required before a return in the G3 Hungerford Stakes three months later. “The Duke was a fantastic owner to train for,” Johnston says. “From the Queen Mary onwards, if he was at the races, he would say to the jockey in the paddock, 'She owes us nothing. Just go out and enjoy yourself. Nothing else matters.' “When she had that penultimate start at Newbury, she finished fourth of nine. I was a little bit disappointed and I expected the Duke to be very disappointed, but not at all. He said, 'That's a great comeback after what she's been through.' Sure enough, she went and won a Group 1 on her next start. He was a dream to train for.” Guy Innes-Ker, the 10th Duke of Roxburghe and owner of Floors Stud, also served a stint as chairman of the National Stud, where the stallion yard is named in his memory. It is fitting, therefore, that Attraction is now living out her retirement in the paddocks there. We paid homage to her at the National Stud on the eve of her 25th birthday. Still frisking visitors for Polos, she's as special now as she ever was: a true flower of Scotland. Thanks for the memories, old girl. The post ‘I Always Say That She Was The Ultimate Racehorse’: Mark Johnston On Attraction As The Great Mare Turns 25 appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions. View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
The Maryland Thoroughbred Industry Renaissance Awards will be presented during a March 22 luncheon at Laurel Park.View the full article -
By Wandering Eyes · Posted
Racing from Aqueduct and Oaklawn Park will be shown on "America's Day at the Races", while the John Battaglia Stakes will be shown on FanDuel TV. View the full article
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